Yesterday we arrived here at camp and got set up. Check out yesterday’s photos to watch the journey and meet the US campers. - Link

We got stocked up before getting on the plane thanks to h1kari. Then on the plane, Dan got out his snakes. Within a short time Yotta had a network up on the plane with IRC and absurdly slow streaming video.

Upon arrival, our bus driver took us on a 10 hour tour from Dusseldorf to camp just North of Berlin. We were up all night getting things ready and I got a few shots just before sunrise like the one above.

Today there are some great talks that I can’t wait to go see!

-Decoding laser printer tracking dots
-Hacking Space
-Geocaching and Alternate Reality Games
-Dungeons and Hyperlinks
-memes, memetics & netculture

Here’s the list of all the presentations today. - Link

This was my first time to Defcon and it was a great time. There are over 7000 people there and there are so many things to do you have to pretty much choose a path and go for it. You could spend all your time in the presentations or participate in the contests and compete for the glory and maybe even the esteemed black badge. There were a few that struck me. The hack the badge contest is for people to hack Joe Grand’s badge. The team that won managed to turn their badge into a frequency analyzer and pump music through it! They sent off to a rapper and had Joe Grand’s poem about the badge made into a rap that rocked. Video by Dan Kaminsky

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For the robot contest, Team Octopi won for the second year in a row with their robot. In this contest you make a robot that can shoot 22 targets within two minutes. It’s a head to head double elimination tournament. My team proudly won third place! The video above is a little snapshot of the event!

After Defcon, 38 other hackers and I took a 24 hour journey by plane and bus to go to CCC camp, a huge, once-every-four-years, hacker conference North of Berlin. I’ll update you on that soon!

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Watch the video and read the pdf to learn how use a hammer, dremel, and vise to make a silver ring out of a pre-1964 half dollar! - Subscribe Link

Download the pdf to read the comic that explains in more detail how to make a ring from a coin. - PDF Link

You know what would be awesome? If someone with photoshop skills could photoshop an old Charles Atlas ad (link 1 and link 2), and make it an ad for Make: to go at the end of this comic book! If you’re into photoshop and can do something like this, drop me a note at bre at makezine dot com!